Cecilia half rises in alarm, which occasions a shower of little pink paper cuttings to flutter from her knee to the floor. “O papa! don’t, don’t throw them away; they’re the countess’s wedding cards!” Down went the corners of the lips. “Were they a duchess’s,” said Dr. Bardon, “there would be no reason for sticking them there for years.” “Only one year and ten months since Annabella married,” timidly interposed Cecilia. “What is it to me if it be twenty!” said the doctor, walking up and down the room as he spoke; “she’s nothing to us, and we’re nothing to her!” “O papa! you used always to like Annabella.” “I liked Annabella well enough, but I don’t care a straw for the countess; and if she had cared for me, she’d have managed to come four miles to see me.” “She has been abroad for some time, and—” “And she has done with little people like us,” said the doctor, drawing himself up to his full height, and looking as if he did not feel himself to be little at all. “I force my acquaintance on no one, and would not give one flower from my garden for the cards of all the peerage.” Cecilia felt the conversation unpleasant, and did not care to keep it up. She bent down, and picked up one by one the scraps of pink paper which she had scattered. Something like a sigh escaped from her lips. Dr. Bardon was the first to speak. “I saw Augustine Aumerle yesterday at church; I suppose he’s on a visit to his brother the vicar.” “How very, very handsome he is!” remarked Cecilia. “You women are such fools,” said the doctor, “you think of nothing but looks.” “But he’s so clever too, so wonderfully clever! They say he carried off all the honours at Cambridge.” “Much good they will do him,” growled the doctor, throwing himself down on his chair; “I got honours too when I was at college, and I might better have been sowing turnips for any advantage I’ve had out of them. It’s the fool that gets on in the world!” This, by the way, was a favourite axiom of Bardon’s, first adopted at the suggestion of Pride, as being highly consolatory to one who had never managed to get on in the world. “I think that I see Ida and Mabel Aumerle crossing the road,” said Cecilia, glancing out of the window. “How beautiful Ida is, and so charming! I declare I think she’s an angel!” “She’s well enough,” replied the doctor, in a tone which said that she was that, but nothing more.